Whether your are screen printing t-shirts to raise awareness, promoting a cause, raising money or marketing a business or product, you need to design accordingly so that people will WANT to wear your output. Consider these tips when designing t-shirts or promotional products:
- KISS – Keep it Simple Sweetie. Simple designs tend to work best and are easy to remember. Think memory retention especially when marketing products and businesses.
- Most people view t-shirts from 5’ – 10’ away, and while walking or moving. Intricate details on a 3 color screen print, might not be worrying about.
- T-shirts with solid screen prints don’t always breathe well. Large screen printed designs on the front or back of a t-shirt don’t flex and stretch well and doesn’t allow proper air flow. Keep this in mind especially when designing fan wear.
- Don’t forget, a residential, home computer printer can create thousands of colors. Just because it looks good on paper doesn’t mean it will work well on a t-shirt or other printable product. Keep the numbers of colors you are using to a minimal.
- When screen printing, try to limit designs to 8-10 colors at the most.
- Contrasting colors make your design pop. You want the eye attracted to the important parts of your design.
- Keep your screen art appropriate for whatever group you are marketing to.
- Special Event shirts: Make sure your design is something that people will be comfortable wearing around OUTSIDE of an event for maximum exposure.
- Custom shirts are wonderful and effective marketing tools in many different situations, so make sure your products include important information in a non-cluttered format.
We just can’t re-iterate enough the fact the custom, screen printed t-shirts are incredible marketing tools because of the ease of wear. Consider having some shirts printed for your next special event, family reunion or sporting event…make the memories last!